Alfred Dewayne Brown deserves final bit of justice for 12...

1of3Alfred Brown hugs the investigator that worked on his case Suzette Ermler Tuesday, June 9, 2015. Monday District Attorney Devon Anderson dropped the capital murder charges against Alfred Brown and he was released Monday. Alfred Brown had been sentenced to death in the 2003 killing of a Houston Police Department officer but is now a free from charges.Photo: Billy Smith II, Chronicle

2of3Alfred Brown walks out of the Harris County Jail and into the arms of his sister Connie Brown, left, and daughter Kierra Brown, 15, right on Monday, June 8, 2015, in Houston.Photo: Karen Warren, Staff / Houston Chronicle

3of3Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announces the joint investigation with Houston Police that resulted in the take down of a gambling network in the Chinatown area during a press conference Wednesday, March 28, 2018, in Houston. The investigation resulted in nineteen people arrested, among those were two former Houston Police officers. The two officers face charges of money laundering.Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez / Houston Chronicle

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column has been edited throughout to reflect that Brown does not face a June 8 deadline to apply for state compensation. The columnist had previously reported, based on statements from Brown's attorneys, that the statute of limitations on the petition began running nearly three years ago when Brown was released. But the state comptroller's office has since confirmed that, under current law, the clock would only start for Brown if and when he meets requirements including a declaration from the state's attorney that he is "actually innocent."

Alfred Dewayne Brown has waited long enough.

It's been nearly three years since the former death row inmate walked out of the Harris County Jail, all smiles as he greeted family and TV news crews following the dismissal of the capital murder charge against him.

Since then, he has been fighting for state compensation for the 12 years he lost behind bars due to a wrongful conviction in the 2003 slaying of veteran Houston Police Officer Charles R. Clark.

I'm glad to report, though, that Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg told me this week that she would announce an independent investigation that could help clear the way for Brown to get paid. Of course, depending on the outcome, it could also clear the way for Brown to be prosecuted again.

But something tells me that won't be the case. All the evidence I'm aware of points to Brown's innocence. And that should lead to his fair compensation.

In 2014, the state's highest criminal court threw out Brown's conviction and death sentence in Clark's murder, largely because prosecutors violated his rights by failing to disclose evidence, a phone record, that supported his alibi.

Former District Attorney Devon Anderson declined, after a lengthy re-investigation, to retry Brown, citing lack of evidence, but police union officials maintained Brown was guilty, and Anderson did not call for an investigation to determine whether he met the legal standard for "actual innocence."

That standard is roughly similar to the one that led the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to toss Brown's conviction due to constitutional error. A claimant must show that the constitutional error at trial "probably" resulted in the conviction of one who is actually innocent and that no reasonable juror would have voted to convict in light of the new evidence.

That new evidence included the phone record, found years after trial in a homicide detective's garage, that substantiated Brown's claim that he was at his girlfriend's house the morning of the murder.

Prosecutors acknowledged violating Brown's rights by failing to disclose the phone record, but claimed it was an inadvertent oversight. Recently, though, an email was unearthed showing that a homicide detective alerted the prosecutor, Dan Rizzo, to the phone record and the potential trouble it spelled for their case.

Since he was freed, Brown has been trying to get on with his life, pursuing a truck-driving career and patiently waiting for the last bit of justice.

So far, he hasn't received one penny of the state compensation due him by law. In 2016, State Comptroller Glenn Hegar ignored precedent and, in my opinion, wrongly denied Brown's initial petition because he didn't have an official declaration of "actual innocence" from Harris County.

Ogg, who defeated Anderson in the 2016 district attorney's race, can now make such a declaration. Some believed she'd do so quickly after taking office and grew frustrated as the case seemed to languish. Eventually, Brown's attorneys filed a civil lawsuit against the county.

But on Tuesday, Ogg revealed that she planned to appoint a special prosecutor to review Brown's case and determine whether he is "actually innocent."

She chose Houston attorney John Raley for the massive undertaking. Raley, 58, is a respected civil lawyer best known for his pro bono legal work that helped the Innocence Project exonerate Michael Morton, who had served 25 years in prison on a wrongful conviction in his wife's Williamson County murder. He also played a major role in the hard-fought exoneration of Hannah Overton, who served seven years in prison before she was cleared in the death of a 4-year-old foster child she and her husband planned to adopt.

Raley is well qualified for the job. He's never been a prosecutor but he is tenacious and thorough, particularly when it comes to battling those in wrongful conviction cases who seem more concerned with reputation or legacy than finding the truth. That means you, former Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley.

"I am the son of a prosecutor and the brother of a prosecutor," Raley told me. "I grew up watching it done with integrity. I still believe most prosecutors are very good people trying to keep us safe. I have no bias one way or another. I'm going to let the facts fall where they may and make a recommendation based on the facts."

The state comptroller's office said Thursday that the statute of limitations on such a petition has not begun running in Brown's case. It would start only if he meets certain requirements, namely that a Harris County prosecuting attorney declares him actually innocent.

Still, Neal Manne, the attorney handling Brown's compensation claim, said he was frustrated at Ogg's delay in taking action in the case.

"We provided the DA more than a year ago with all of the information showing that Mr. Brown is 100 percent innocent," Manne said. "It's baffling that the DA now wants to outsource the administration of justice to someone new ... For Mr. Brown, the injustice at the hands of Harris County continues. We hope that Harris County eventually will do the right thing."

Some questioned why Ogg would appoint someone to study Brown's innocence at all.

"Why anyone needs to be appointed to state the obvious, that Alfred Dewayne Brown is innocent, defies logic. I look at this as an attempt to pass the buck," said defense attorney Patrick McCann, former president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association.

Ogg said her chief concern was getting to the truth in the case.

If Raley does find Brown actually innocent, that could help Brown's compensation claim and also his lawsuit against the county. But if Raley doesn't find for Brown, Ogg said she may have to decide whether to charge him again in Clark's murder.

She chose Raley, she said, not to pass the buck, but because she felt the case needed an independent, fair review by someone outside the DA's office.

Asked why she didn't act sooner, Ogg said it had nothing to do with any potential political fallout. She cited other important post-trial cases her office is tasked with reviewing, as well as delays across the board because of Harvey-related damage to the courthouse.

"It's a leader's job to determine how my time is best spent, and post-Harvey, there is a system that is in great stress right now," Ogg said, as she sat at her desk in a temporary office.

It's not passing the buck, she said, to hire an independent expert to look at a case where lives hang in the balance, including Brown's and the family of Officer Clark.

"I think the public trust requires some extra due-diligence in a case like this," she said.

While the case was on her radar before, Ogg called the email unearthed in March a "game changer." It showed Rizzo really did have the phone record all along that could have helped clear Brown.

"That piece of evidence brought clarity to a very hotly contested allegation as to whether or not it was intentionally done, whether it was done to obtain a guilty verdict at any cost," Ogg said. "It tended to show Brown's innocence, and not just his lack of guilt."

The email led Ogg to take the rare step of filing a complaint with the State Bar of Texas against Rizzo, whom she once called a friend. Asked if she might appoint someone in the future to investigate Rizzo for prosecutorial misconduct or any criminal violation, she said simply: one at a time.

"Brown is the first priority," she said.

I'm glad Ogg sees that. She's doing the right thing in appointing Raley to get at the truth in Brown's case. I just wish she'd done it sooner.

Lisa Falkenberg is the Chronicle’s vice president/editor of opinion. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with more than 20 years’ experience, Falkenberg leads the editorial board and the paper’s opinion and outlook sections, including letters, op-eds and Gray Matters.

Falkenberg wrote a metro column at the Chronicle for more than a decade that explored a range of topics, including education, criminal justice and state, local and national politics. In 2015, Falkenberg was awarded the Pulitzer for commentary, as well as the American Society of News Editors’ Mike Royko Award for Commentary/Column Writing for a series that exposed a wrongful conviction in a death case and led Texas lawmakers to reform the grand jury system. She was a Pulitzer finalist in 2014.

Raised in Seguin, Texas, Falkenberg is the daughter of a truck driver and a homemaker, and the first in her family to go to college. She earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. She started her career at The Associated Press, working in the Austin and Dallas bureaus. In 2004, Falkenberg was named Texas AP Writer of the Year.

She joined the Chronicle in 2007 as a roving state correspondent based in Austin.

Falkenberg has mentored journalism students through the Chronicle’s high school journalism program and volunteered with the News Literacy Project. She is a fellow with the British-American Project and has completed a fellowship at Loyola’s Journalist Law School in Los Angeles.